Archives for Slovakia

In today’s Wall Street journal, we look at Tuesday’s vote in Slovakia – here’s the full piece:Richard Sulik has emerged as Brussels’s public enemy number one. As leader of Slovakia’s Freedom and Solidarity party, or SaS, Mr. Sulik has consistently a…

…Slovakian MPs would be up to their eyes in them. The Slovakian EFSF vote has provided us with plenty of action over the past few days, with Richard Sulik’s SaS party certainly putting the cat amongst the eurozone pigeons.One of the consistent themes…

As expected, it now looks as if parties in the Slovakian parliament have come to an agreement over the ratification of the EFSF. The opposition Smer party, which abstained from the original vote in order to force elections seems to have got its wish, w…

Yesterday’s Handelsblatt featured a story on how an “Eastern European Tea Party” is brewing, as Slovakia’s Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party is sticking to its guns and continues to oppose the expansion of the EFSF, the eurozone’s temporary bailout fu…

In our post last week, we set out the current state of play regarding the ratification of the expansion of the EFSF by the 17 eurozone’s members’ parliaments.Since then, the Austrian and Estonian parliaments have ratified the EFSF expansion as expe…

Below is the current status of the EFSF upgrade as ratified by national parliaments. A reminder that this is the vote on the package of measures agreed by Eurozone leaders back in July, and does not increase the overall size of the EFSF, merely its len…

If you think that Europe’s toughest economic hawks sit in Frankfurt or dwell within Ifo – the flagship German econmic institute – think again. In fact, the German hawks have nothing on some economists and politicians in Slovakia – the tiger of Central …

The eurozone’s embarrassing collateral-for-loans spat continues, with member states disagreeing over whether Finland should be allowed to get collateral from Greece in return for giving Athens fresh loans. Who should guarantee the guarantees remains th…

This week saw another twist in the ongoing soap opera which is the eurozone bailouts. The Finnish government – no doubt feeling the anti-bailout True Finns (currently the largest party in the polls) breathing down its neck – has for some time demanded …

At Open Europe, we tend to find comparisons between the EU and the USSR rather far-fetched. The reason is simple: not only does the EU, for all its many flaws, also stand for some positive things, such as open borders and free markets (although they co…